Women's General Session link to YouTube

Hello, we normally get our members to come to our building and watch conference since our stake center is a little far and a lot of our members walk to church. While trying to connect today to watch women's conference I noticed that we couldn't get a connection it was 5 o'clock already and nothing. While I started to check different things I decided to see if I could watch on my phone, and I could. It had started already but my laptop couldn't connect, that's when I notice that it was a YouTube link. I remembered that the LDS access wireless network has it blocked. In years past we were able to go to LDS.org and watch no problem, the conference would play right there on lds.org without any issues. Now since the broadcast was over YouTube we couldn't connect at church. Not sure if the same thing is going to happen next week for all the sessions of general conference. Not sure why the church would block YouTube and then use it to broadcast conference, doesn't make any sense. I tried Mormon channel but it was the same issue a link to YouTube. Do you know of any way to get around this? I ended up connecting my laptop to my phone's internet and that's how I was able to help our sisters watch conference today. Unfortunately my phone's internet is not unlimited and now I'm out data for my personal use. If you can help with this issue I would really appreciate it.

Regards,
Cristian Guzman

How did you determine it was coming through YouTube servers? When I stream the rebroadcast from lds.org, it comes through Brightecove via a server in Virginia with an IP address on the RoadRunner network. Was the live stream channeled differently?

From what I've seen, the live traffic is split -- sometimes you'll get YouTube and other times you'll get the Brightcove player. I'm not sure why they would do this without unblocking YouTube in the meetinghouses (at least for the weekend), but it appears that's what they're doing. Perhaps try a new browsing session (different browser or private/incognito mode) and you might end up with the Brightcove player instead of YouTube.

Mikerowaved wrote:How did you determine it was coming through YouTube servers?

Because when I went full screen, it said, YouTube is now full screen, press ESC to exit. And before that, the YouTube logo was at the bottom right next to the full screen button.

I wonder, based on your Brightcove comment, if LDS.org uses YouTube as an overflow method.

lajackson wrote:I wonder, based on your Brightcove comment, if LDS.org uses YouTube as an overflow method.

Hummm... this whole YouTube thing is something I'm going to press hard on at the upcoming LDSTech Conference. If they're going to persist in using it, then it simply needs to be unblocked; at least certain aspects of it, if that's possible. There are worse sites freely available through the firewall, why focus just on YouTube?

I'm wondering if the blocking is more for traffic control than censorship. Perhaps what's needed is a way to insure authorized devices can stream it, but the general congregation can't. If they can allow YouTube though the hard-wire, but not the WAP, that would help.

russellhltn wrote:I'm wondering if the blocking is more for traffic control than censorship.

It's entirely possible, but then I would think Netflix, Amazon Prime, WatchESPN, and a host of others would be on their blacklist as well.

russellhltn wrote:If they can allow YouTube though the hard-wire, but not the WAP, that would help.

I could live with that, but I don't think it would be practical to implement.

Mikerowaved wrote:

russellhltn wrote:I'm wondering if the blocking is more for traffic control than censorship.

It's entirely possible, but then I would think Netflix, Amazon Prime, WatchESPN, and a host of others would be on their blacklist as well.

Are you sure they're not? I mean, who's going to complain about that?

I was going to try to use a laptop to stream for increased video quality at our stake center for the women's broadcast, but 30 minutes before, I tried to connect and it was a YouTube link for me as well. I had to switch everything over to the satellite at the last minute. I had done a lot of testing before the conference and had everything set up. This was the first time I was scrambling that close to the start to get everything working for a broadcast. I was hoping that if they're going to use YouTube for streaming that they might have a different stream that only the Stake leaders could access (maybe password protected or something.)

I know it's my own fault for trying something that's not official, and it's really just a "nice to have." We have started broadcasting our Stake Conference in HD and people are used to watching General Conference at home in 1080p. It's a little disappointing to come to the chapel and see what many have described to me as a blurry or out-of-focus image. One person even asked if there was anything I could do to adjust the projector to make the picture focus.

Hi all, thanks for all your replies and for taking the time to check this out and offer your opinion. What I gather from all the different post is that the only thing that might help is trying different browsers and maybe trying to get connected earlier. I have a laptop with windows 10 and a Mac Book pro with Safari so I'll try my luck this weekend and hope for the best, otherwise we'll just have to get rides for everyone to go to the stake center. Again thank you all for your time and hope you all have a great conference weekend.

Regards,
Cristian Guzman

cguzman wrote:What I gather from all the different post is that the only thing that might help is trying different browsers and maybe trying to get connected earlier.

If you really have a large number of members who will have a difficult time getting to another meetinghouse for the general conference broadcast, and you feel strongly that members would benefit from watching conference at your meetinghouse, I would suggest you contact your Stake Technology Specialist and seek permission from your stake president to use another option which requires careful care, planning, and followup, and is totally discouraged.

Read the complete topic and consider the cautions given before you ask.

Hi there, yes our Stake Technology Specialist will be at out building tonight. I really don't think we'll need anything like that. Our plan will be to try for Saturday's morning session and if it doesn't work we'll have to use again my phone's internet just for that session and for the rest of conference we'll just plan on driving people to the Stake Center. We have a few members that are willing to drive them up there and should be a good opportunity to serve and have our members get to know each other. We'll see what out specialist suggest tonight but if not that's the plan for now. Thank you for your help and suggestions.

We have a Roku device at our building that we have occasionally used for General Conference (...omitting long story about why we couldn't use the Stake Center...)

It looks to me like the Roku device we have was provided by the FM group, due to the zippered cloth bag and labels on the device. It's worked very well when we needed it. I ran a wire from the router directly to the device and cut wireless access, just to help ensure the connection wasn't overloaded by lots of members.

mevans wrote:I ran a wire from the router directly to the device and cut wireless access, just to help ensure the connection wasn't overloaded by lots of members.

Remember that even though you are directly wired, members using WiFi can still hog the bandwidth of your connection, making streaming difficult. You should work with your STS and be prepared to turn off the WiFi if there is the slightest hint of trouble.

lajackson wrote:

mevans wrote:I ran a wire from the router directly to the device and cut wireless access, just to help ensure the connection wasn't overloaded by lots of members.

Remember that even though you are directly wired, members using WiFi can still hog the bandwidth of your connection, making streaming difficult. You should work with your STS and be prepared to turn off the WiFi if there is the slightest hint of trouble.

Yes, that's why I cut off wireless access. I just unplugged the wireless access points from the router. We then ran cat 5 to the chapel for English and into another room for another language. That meant we were streaming it twice. I didn't want to take any chances of people hitting the wireless access.

Thanks all for your help. Quick update, Google chrome and Microsoft Edge broadcast is over YouTube. I brought my MacBook and broadcast over Safari is not YouTube and straight from LDS.ORG I'm able to watch here at church using the church's wifi. Thanks for the suggestions and hope that this can help someone out there trying to make things work for this conference. It also works on Safari of my phone and Ipad so if you don't have a MacBook but and Ipad or Iphone available and can get that connected to your tv or Projector it should work!!! Good Luck!!!!

OK so I guess is a not a matter of browser but of luck. Somehow the connection on the Mac was lost during the break between sessions and now I keep getting the YouTube link but on my windows laptop I was able to get the Brightcove connection. I hope I don't loose it over the next half hour before conference starts again. So having a couple of laptops here has definitely help. I wish they didn't broadcast conference over YouTube but I hope all of you trying to watch over the internet at different church buildings are making it work, good luck!!!

Once upon a time, all of the chapels were on the VPN. The website could sense where the request was coming from. (10.x.x.x or public) But with the upgraded firewalls, the "public" area isn't in the VPN anymore. Lds.org may not know a chapel from any other traffic it receives.